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Study challenges the idea of global warming wars

Al Gore got a Nobel peace prize, in part, for helping to prevent war by highlighting global warming and helping to slow it. In fact, climate change is not likely to cause conflict in the future, according to a study co-authored by Professor Richard Tol of the Economic and Social Research Institute (Esri) in Dublin.

The conclusion challenges predictions made by the likes of Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, and John Reid, the former British defence secretary, who have forecast that future conflicts will be caused by rising temperatures. Earlier this year Clinton told her Senate confirmation hearing that climate change is a security threat. "At the extreme, it threatens our very existence," she said. "But well before that point, it could well incite wars of an old kind over basic resources like food, water and arable land."